Avenues school the clincher in $13.5M townhouse sale

Clockwise from top left: Joseph Koicim, 434-436 West 22nd Street, the Avenues school and Sean Lefkovits

Brokers who predicted that Avenues: The World School would be a driver for the West Chelsea real estate market may have been spot on. A 53-foot-wide townhouse in the neighborhood just sold for $13.5 million, and broker Joseph Koicim told The Real Deal that the property’s proximity to the tony private school was the catalyst for the sale.

The buyers, who have three children, are members of the Preston family, which has several real estate holdings across the country. “They were looking for a property like this,” said Koicim, who brokered the deal along with Marcus & Millichap colleagues Peter Von Der Ahe, Sean Lefkovits and Assaf Tayyar. “There were 23 written offers, but these buyers needed to be near the school, so they stretched for it.”

The 12,688-square-foot townhouse is located at 434-436 West 22nd Street, between Ninth and Tenth avenues near the High Line. It contains 13 units, five of which are rent-stabilized, and boasts an elevator as well as a 1,750-square-foot garden. The asking price was $15 million, or about $1,182 per square foot, and it sold for about $1,064 per square foot. The seller is identified in city property records as Catherine Dupuy.

The new owners plan to live in a large two-bedroom unit in the property, Koicim said, and have the ability to subdivide the lots and create a single-family home in the future. The deal comes with 2,276 square feet in unused air rights.

The for-profit Avenues school, which cost $85 million to develop and launch, is located in a 10-story, 215,000-square-foot converted warehouse at 10th Avenue and 25th Street. It charges its 1,300 or so students, including celebrity kids such as Suri Cruise, $43,000 a year in tuition.